


Shall we descend together into the dust?

by bbcsherlockian



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Hell, the righteous man
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-24
Updated: 2013-01-24
Packaged: 2017-11-26 18:49:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/653324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bbcsherlockian/pseuds/bbcsherlockian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Will it go down to the bars of Sheol? Shall we descend together into the dust?” Job 17:16</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shall we descend together into the dust?

The day the vessel bloodline was chosen was the day Castiel truly started to fall.

He waited centuries to watch the steady trickle of generations to pass; each seemed more compatible than the last, and yet they kept dying. Impatient as he was, _this was God’s will_ , and everything would fall into place. He had faith.

It was during a lapse in his interest, while heaven was at its most heated, when two brothers sacrificed everything for each other. When the weary man surrendered to years of anguish; when a righteous man picked up a knife. Anticlimactic.

Only the after effects shook the angels’ resolves and made agitation peak. He watched them debate for days: the first seal had been broken by the very mortal who was destined to stop them, and they were unsure of how to proceed. Castiel grimaced at their indecision, and lingered back, letting his input drop from the argument. They would never notice his absence.

“If this is God’s will-”

A slight shift of air.

“-then it is not our place to interfere!”

And he was gone.

He flew down, his grace burning like a welcome fire in the malignant darkness; the enochian which spilled from his lips a hopeful melody to overpower the screams. Lights flickered and disobedient men’s bodies were renewed only to be stripped bare once more. In such a changing environment, Castiel was the only constant, and he thrived within it.

The human’s soul was something anew to the dirtied wisps which clung to the echoes of impure vessels of men who had stumbled into the arms of the devil. It shimmered around his form, still remaining golden and pure, even as he lifted a blade above his head to drive further into the mottled form under his hand.

He screamed then, words dirtied and camouflaged by the destructive mess which met his eyes. The angel mourned the loss of a beautiful man led so far astray by a place meant to punish a far lesser being.

The man grimaced, dirt and blood flecked across his chiselled jaw, eyes screwed and teeth set resolutely. There was something hidden behind the face which gave no indication of feeling, set in his eyes which glimmered with the thrill of his trade. As much as the mortal despised the thought, he couldn’t erase the enjoyment he was experiencing, and the following horror at such contemplation.

This man had not been scarred by a lifetime in Hell; he was creating his own wounds and was loving every second of it.

So pure. So innocent.

So twisted.

He glanced up at Castiel, and deciphered only a blazing whiteness alien to this dark landscape, desperate to be rid of it. The angel saw himself reflected in the man’s irises: a heavenly protector, a guardian of the earth and of _this man_. This human.

Castiel reached out to him, sought to provide him with comfort, to save the righteous man and to enforce God’s will. For a mere second, when the angel’s grace and the man’s soul danced and jostled together, when the light of both parties was so bright that there was little hope of distinguishing the beginning of one soul and the end of another, something unexpected occurred. Castiel felt flesh on himself, felt an angelic embodiment of a human hand as he grasped the man’s shoulder and carried him upwards towards sunlight and oxygen.

The mortal had made him more human than he had ever been before, and he was humbled.

Humbled as he watched the man struggle out of the dirt, and take his first breath of forty years.

Humbled as he attempted to make himself heard to the man who was too human and too unspoilt to hear him.

Humbled as he greeted Dean, his Dean, and looked at his soul through his eyes for the first time.

Castiel had waited thousands of years for his righteous man.

Castiel had waited thousands of years for the man he was destined to love.


End file.
